


reionize

by circulation



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/F, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-13 03:34:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18460628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/circulation/pseuds/circulation
Summary: She had bought herself the black dress years ago.





	reionize

 

She had bought herself the black dress years ago. Long before anything had gone wrong, after the ranch had been built and all the dust and trouble had settled in their tracks and their lives had been as close to normal as they could get, and still, she bought the dress. Jack had read about it to her from one of his books — some frilly English novel that was full of two dollar words and fainting and elegant debutante balls, one even he hadn’t liked and she’d begged him to stop reading after the third day in a row of him lulling her to sleep before dinner — he’d read that ladies were supposed to dress all in black when they were mourning, sometimes for months. She’d heard of it before, of course, seen women in the city in their dark dresses trailing behind a funeral procession or sobbing into their handkerchiefs over a dusty gravestone, but Abigail had seen plenty of people put in the ground and never had a dress for it, made special, so all the world would know just by looking at her that someone she loved had died.

In the book it was an old lady with a son who died in some war, a girl whose doomed lover wasted away from consumption before they could get married. Abigail had never had any illusions of who she’d be mourning for.

The thought had nagged in the back of Abigail’s mind for weeks, every morning that spring when the sun came up and she let John roll over against her and kiss her sweetly, and then she got up and made coffee and sent her husband out to work and fed the dog and opened the windows, and then snuck back into their room and pulled the chest with his guns out from under their bed and picked the lock and counted them, and the bullets, to be sure. Every morning. The thought had nagged, and so she had taken a horse into the city and pretended she was going to order feed for the livestock, and instead she had gone to the tailor and asked him to fit her a black mourning dress. Nothing fancy, a long full skirt and a woolen jacket, cotton shirtwaist underneath, but serviceable enough for her.

The tailor had asked her, “Who have you lost, ma’am, if you don't mind me asking?” and Abigail had stared hard at her reflection with the dark skirt draped around her hips and her waist and the sleeves gathered up above her wrists, the jacket pinned modestly over the soft white of her throat, too-pale next to all that black.

“Nobody yet,” she had said, and bit her tongue to hold back “soon enough.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Four years later and the dress still fit just fine. She’d gained weight after she’d bought it, when they’d still been newly settled and then again from the baby; then she’d lost it again after her daughter had died, and even more while John was gone. Worried sick. She had always been good at worrying, at letting it overcome her and take up so much space in her head she couldn't sleep or eat or breathe, and terrible at being alone — months trapped in a goddamn prison with Jack and no way to know if they were ever going home or if her husband was ever coming back was enough to nearly kill her. But they had gone home, and John had come back, after all, and finally she had felt the air fill her up as if she hadn’t taken a single breath the whole while and heard her own blood stop pounding in her ears, and then —

The dress fit fine.

  
  
  
  
  


She’d found Jack still outside the barn, later. She had gone back into the house after they’d found John and sat clutching at her bloodstained skirt and the headboard of her bed for hours, staring at nothing, before the sun had started to set and her ears had finally stopped ringing and she’d slipped into her housecoat and wandered outside to find her son.

He’d taken one of the horse blankets down from the wall and pulled it over John and then collapsed, it seemed, his long legs splayed out in front of him like a new colt and his chin tucked down against his chest, the dog curled up and whining with his head on Jack’s knee. There had been blood on Jack’s cheek and Abigail could see him shaking even in the dim light, the half-shadow of the barn, and she had swallowed hard and pulled her coat tight around her chest.

Jack had turned his face up to her, wordless, and she had looked at the shape of her husband unmoving under the blanket and felt nothing. For once, blessedly, nothing. She had supposed, then, that after all those years of worrying herself sick, there hadn’t been much left to spare when it was over, when she’d seen it with her own eyes and didn’t have to wonder.

She had asked John once how many times she would have to bury him. He had said never as if he was sure of it, an indisputable fact. She had thought then that the ache in her gut she got every time he was gone and she wasn't sure if she’d ever see him again was what burying him would feel like. She had never guessed that it wouldn't feel like anything at all.

“Jack,” she had said, her voice perfectly level, her hands perfectly still, “go get a shovel, please.”

She and Jack together had dragged John up the hill to where her daughter was buried, pulled Uncle off the porch and up there too, and dug holes for both of them. They’d covered them up with dirt one spadeful at a time and Abigail had nailed together two little crosses from scrap wood in the barn and hammered them into the dirt, and then she had gone down into the house and slept until after noon the next day. When she had woken she had pulled the black dress out of her cedar trunk and put it on and only glanced at herself in the mirror once, the dark circles under her eyes and the white of her throat and the sharp bones of her wrists, and then she had gone into town and run her errands as if nothing had happened and felt absolutely nothing.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Jack had brought a cup of coffee to her, out on the porch where she’d been for the better part of a week. He had pulled up a chair next to her and gently taken her knitting out of her hands and replaced it with the coffee, and said, carefully, “How long have you had that dress, ma?”

She had drunk without tasting it and kept her eyes fixed out on the corral, at the horses making lazy circles in the dust. She hadn't looked at Jack in days. Selfish, she knew, but she couldn't. Looked too much like his father, and he always had; a long, long time ago, when he was small and she and John had both been idiotic and horrible to each other, that had given her a guilty, smug flush of satisfaction, but now Jack was sixteen and two inches taller than her and his father was dead. There had been no vindication in it anymore.

“Long time,” Abigail had said eventually. “A few years. I don't know.”

Jack had reached up and taken one of her hands and squeezed, and she had risked a glance at his face. He looked like John, but so, so young, and even then he had looked just as tired and sad and bone-deep worn out as she had felt.

She had taken a shaking breath, set her mug down, held Jack’s hand in both of her own, said, “We’re gonna be fine.”

Jack had said, “Okay, ma,” and dropped his head onto her shoulder, and she had pressed a kiss into his hair and closed her eyes.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Life had gone on, harder than before but easy enough. The sun had come up, and no one had been there to roll over in their bed and kiss her good morning, and she had got up anyway and put on her black dress and made coffee for herself and opened the windows and fed the dog, and she and Jack had gone out to work and the guns sat locked tight in the box under her bed, and for the first time in years she hadn’t spent any time worrying at all.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
  


 

 

Jack shakes her awake at dawn, a hand at her shoulder and the other tugging at the corner of her blanket as if he isn't sure he should pull it off, and once she finally opens her eyes he whispers, “Mama, there's someone outside,” and she is wide awake, heart beating rabbit-fast against her ribs.

Of course they came back. How could she have been so stupid, thinking they would leave her and Jack alone? Of course they came back. A little bit of quiet and she’d truly convinced herself there wasn't anything left they could take from her. How goddamn foolish.

She pushes Jack off and away and scrambles up, jams both arms into her housecoat as fast as she can and reaches under the bed for John’s guns. She hands Jack a revolver even though she isn’t quite sure if he’s any good at using it, checks the barrels of the shotgun for shells, and says, “Stay in the house. Lock the doors and keep away from the windows, baby, all right? Can you do that for me?”

“I’m going with you,” he says. His eyes are wide, and he clutches the revolver against his chest, knuckles white in a death grip, and she touches the side of his face, watches him flinch.

Abigail says, “You’re staying in the house. You ain’t dying, too.”

Jack turns pale. She knows what he’s thinking, sees him struggling to tamp down on the fear in his face, but he swallows it and nods and says, “Okay. Be careful.”

She rubs her thumb across his cheek and goes out of her room and checks all the windows for movement. She sees nothing, so she slips out the back door and makes her way around the house, as quiet as she can. There’s an unfamiliar horse hitched out by the corral, only one, and she makes out just one set of hoofprints leading to it from the road, one set of footprints leading from it to the barn.

Not lawmen, then. In her experience it isn't much like them to come alone, or before the sun. A rustler, maybe, though John had made sure to give them a reputation not to be fucked with or stolen from — but maybe by now they know he’s gone, think Abigail would be an easy target all by herself. The animals are quiet, not even the chickens woken up to cluck nervously at the intrusion, so maybe not, but then —

She shakes her head, stays quick and low, and rushes to the barn. She follows the footprints around the front of it, stops at the corner and peeks around just for an instant and catches her eye on a figure up on the hill.

The thought of a stranger making himself welcome on her property, walking over her family’s graves like he has any right to, twists in her gut.

She goes around the barn and sneaks up the hill, silent, and presses her back against the big old tree at the top, where she knows the intruder can’t see her, steels herself, and comes out from behind it with the shotgun pointed and whistles, and all of a sudden she realizes who it is.

There, in the ironsights of her gun, is Sadie Adler, sat next to John’s grave cross-legged on top of her old leather overcoat, spread underneath her atop the dirt like a picnic blanket. She’s set her hat and her holsters next to her on the ground and her long hair hangs loose down her back, falls around her shoulders when she startles and looks up towards Abigail’s whistle, her eyes shining.

“Mrs. Marston,” Sadie says, and her voice cracks, rusty, like she hasn't used it in a while.  Abigail is struck frozen, speechless. Sadie pushes herself up to her feet, brushes dirt from the knees of her trousers and then takes a few steps towards Abigail, glances down at the shotgun, seems to think better of it and stops. “I didn't mean to wake you.”

Abigail stares.

She hasn’t seen a friendly face in months, barely spoken to anyone besides her own son. She never expected to see Sadie again in the first place, since she’d said her fond goodbyes and left the country years ago, and yet here she is. She looks the same, unchanged, except for fine wrinkles at the corners of her mouth, silver threads weaving through the gold of her hair, sun freckles dark on her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. She looks down at the little cross in the dirt and then at Abigail, the way Abigail remembers looking at her, years and years ago in the snow: eyes full of sympathy and terrible sadness, as if she was a wild thing that needed  calming, and something inside of Abigail cracks.

“Abigail,” Sadie says softly, and reaches out a hand and pushes the barrel of the shotgun down to point towards the dirt. Abigail lets her, too stunned to react, and feels her throat start to tighten, the pinpricks of tears begin behind her eyes. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry, I — “

Abigail lets out a sob, wretched even to her own ears, and drops the gun. Sadie crosses the distance in an instant and gathers Abigail up in her arms and whispers, I’m sorry _,_ over and over, and Abigail’s knees give out all at once. She sinks to the ground and cries like she hasn’t been able to for months, wails with it, and Sadie goes down with her and cradles Abigail against her shoulder and lets it happen.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Sadie drags her into the house and shuffles her back to bed and Abigail goes, pliant and worn down, her head aching. She sleeps for a few hours and when she wakes up she finds Sadie in the kitchen, her hair braided back and her sleeves rolled up, Jack at her elbow. He’s dicing something, slow and meticulous with a sharp knife, while Sadie tends to a wide skillet full of what looks like eggs and potatoes on the stove. It smells amazing, and for what feels like the first time in weeks, Abigail’s stomach lets out a growl.

Sadie must hear it because she turns, Jack a moment after, and she says, “Well, good morning. I hope you're hungry.”

Her eyes are soft, wisps of hair stuck to her forehead in the heat from the stove, the corners of her mouth turned up as if she’s just told a joke. Jack is smiling too, and Abigail isn’t sure if she feels bitter and angry or horribly relieved.

“I could have done that,” she says, useless, and Sadie laughs, a hoarse thing in the back of her throat that scratches on its way out.

“Oh, no offense meant, ma’am,” Sadie says, “but I’ve had your cooking.”

“Heard that one before,” Abigail mumbles.

Sadie laughs again, flaps a hand at her and says, “Go sit down.”

She does, watches through the open door from the dining room as Jack finishes mincing something green and Sadie reaches over and scrapes it into her pan and stirs the whole thing one last time for good measure, and then she pulls the skillet off the heat and comes to set it down in front of Abigail on the table, steam rising off it in waves. She watches it drift, and Jack scoops some of the food into a bowl and sets it and a fork down in front of her.

Abigail stares at her food long and hard and says, “Sadie, how did you know?”

Sadie hesitates, lowering herself into the chair across the table. Abigail knows she isn’t making sense, hasn’t given any context, but Sadie knows exactly what she means.

Jack pretends he isn’t listening, busies himself making a plate for Sadie too, then his own. God bless him, Abigail thinks. Good boy.

Sadie says, “I was down in Mexico, same time he was. I heard what he was doing. People like us, you know, they talk, so I — I heard what them lawmen had him doing, and he was kicking up all sorts of trouble, and I —”

She cuts off, pushing her food around in front of her, and frowns, shakes her head. Abigail realizes suddenly that once again, she’s holding her breath.

“I knew they weren't never gonna let him come home,” Sadie says, and Abigail flinches, smooths the fabric of her black skirt in her lap, doesn't think about how long she had known the same thing. “I figured it was just a matter of time. I thought I’d come and see you were alright, I didn’t know he was already gone. I’m sorry, Abigail.”

“You got nothing to be sorry for.”

Sadie studies her, and gives her the kind of half-smile that doesn't reach her eyes. 

“I loved that ornery bastard,” she says. “You know.”

Abigail inhales through her nose, sharp, says, “I know. I did too.”

“You were there for me,” Sadie says slowly, testing the waters. “When mine passed. Thought it would be kind of me to return the favor.”

It’s the sort of thing that should make Abigail bristle. She doesn’t want pity, or charity, or to be coddled; she’s no simpering widow, wasting away, unable to keep herself alive without a man. She’s handled things and taken care of herself and her son and the farm just fine, regardless of what Sadie saw this morning — but she remembers Sadie, long ago, when they’d first met. She’d never bothered to be stoic and unaffected, sat at the edge of camp for days just weeping, letting all of it out. Abigail had sat next to her and rubbed a hand up and down Sadie’s back for comfort and soothed her as best she could and said, Stay with us, and once she had stopped crying Sadie had turned to her and said, Thank you, miss, I don't know what I would do without you. They were still strangers then but Sadie had pulled herself together and after the worst of her grief had passed it had turned out she was stronger and fiercer than any other woman that Abigail had ever met, and she had repaid every ounce of kindness with interest and saved Abigail’s hide and John’s and Jack’s more times than she could even count. And Sadie Adler had the nerve to sit in Abigail’s kitchen now, a decade later, and imply there was any more kindness she could show them that wouldn’t cause Abigail’s heart to burst.

“You don’t owe me nothing,” says Abigail. 

Sadie gives her the half-smile again and says, “I know.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


She spends the day helping Abigail around the house while Jack works outside, though there’s not much to get done with only two people living in a big house like this. Abigail tries to be grateful for the help, even though she still hasn't decided if she wants it or not, but she knows Sadie isn't much of one for menial tasks and the gesture of her lending a hand with the washing and pinning sheets to the clothesline without complaint matters, even if it doesn't seem like much. Sadie stands next to her most of the day and brushes her elbow against Abigail’s and regales her with stories of bounty hunting in Argentina, the beaches in Brazil, trying to lie low out west in Mexico and slouching back to the States when the revolution started, and Abigail listens like Sadie’s reading to her from a penny dreadful, captivated. Sadie makes dinner, too, relents eventually to Abigail’s insistence she help and then treats them to another round of tales over the dinner table and grins and says, Sure, darling, if you think you can make it interesting, when Jack asks if she’d ever let him write a book about her. Then Jack takes his leave to go read in his room and Sadie stacks all the dishes in the sink and Abigail goes into her wardrobe and fishes out a bottle of real nice scotch whisky she’s been hiding from Uncle for the last three years and holds it out to Sadie, eyebrows raised, and Sadie laughs again, coarse, and takes it.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


They wander outside and Abigail starts a fire and they drink half the bottle in comfortable silence out of old chipped teacups, and Abigail watches Sadie take down her hair and feels the pleasant heat of drunkenness settle in her cheeks.

"You know,” Sadie says. She studies the lack of whisky in the bottom of her cup, pushes herself up on one knee to lean over and take back the bottle when Abigail hands it to her. “You’re doing alright. The ranch, I mean.”

“Oh. Yeah, I suppose. Should've seen it a year ago, it was real nice then.” Abigail bites the inside of her cheek and doesn’t say: when John was here. “We lost most of the animals while we were gone. Used to have a bunch of horses and sheep. Just cows, now.”

"Cows are fine,” Sadie says, matter-of-fact.  

Abigail smiles, feels it crinkle the bridge of her nose, and says, “Sure.”

“You making any money?”

“Some,” Abigail says. “Not much. I don’t know. It’s hard for an old lady and a boy to run a ranch all on their lonesome.”

“You ain’t no old lady,” Sadie snorts, “what are you, thirty two? Look at you.”

“I’m thirty five, thank you.”

“Still, you ain’t old.”

Abigail shrugs and says, “Older than I thought I’d get,” and throws back the rest of her drink. “It ain’t so bad anyhow, it's just — you know.”

“Do I, now,” Sadie says.

Abigail chews the inside of her cheek, stares into the fire and takes a moment to choose the right words, tips a little more whisky into her cup. There’s no way to express it, nothing that quite sounds the way it feels — no neat bow she can tie on the last three months of trying to piece the broken parts of her world back together, the coup de grace of a lifetime of losing everyone she had ever cared for or who had cared for her one right after the other and feeling sorry for herself every time. The endless worrying, replaced sharply by nothing, and then the sudden, nauseating resurgence of all of it the instant Sadie had shown up this morning, the back-and-forth all day in her gut between the grief and the bitter defensiveness and the _relief_.

None of it made sense enough before half a bottle of whisky, and when she looks up Sadie is watching her patiently. Her hair loose, her nose flushed pink, her drink spilling through the tiny cracks in Abigail’s hand-me-down china, and Abigail really feels like she might break any minute.

“Lonely,” she says eventually, without looking away, and it's as close as she's going to get. “It’s lonely.”

Sadie doesn’t reply, just looks at her with something sad in her eyes, not unlike pity, and it’s not what Abigail wanted at all, and she finally bristles.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she says.

“I’m not,” Sadie starts, and then stops. She sucks her lip between her teeth, swirling whisky in her cup, and screws up her mouth to one side and says, “Might be a lot less lonely if you quit wearing them widow’s weeds, don't you think?”

Abigail huffs through her nose, reaches up to dig her fingernails into the clasp at her collar, self-conscious. “That’s not what I mean. You know it ain't.”

And she’s just drunk enough, just lonesome enough, with just enough hysterical pressure building to the snapping point in the back of her throat, to undo the clasp at her throat, one-handed, fingers deft, pull the wool back until her collarbone, the swell of her breasts, is exposed, and Sadie stares at the sudden pale shock of Abigail’s skin for just a moment and then leans forward. Abigail thinks, wildly, she’s about to kiss her, but Sadie just reaches out and tugs the fabric back and pinches it closed at Abigail’s throat, and says, “That ain’t why I came here.”

Abigail can’t stop it coming out when she says, “I wish it was.”

Sadie jerks her hand back like she’s been burned, watches Abigail fumble uselessly at her collar and drains her drink, and doesn't say anything else for a long time. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Abigail leaves Sadie alone at the fire, retreats into the house bitter, her head swimming, and tosses and turns too much all night to call it sleep. In the morning Sadie is gone, and it’s only fair. Abigail tries her hardest to ignore the dull throb of a headache beginning in her temples, the knot in her throat she can’t swallow past. It feels quiet and tense in the house without Sadie there, like she’d nestled into an empty space Abigail hadn’t really noticed until it was filled, easy as if it was for her all along.

She doesn’t mention it, and Jack doesn't bring it up. She makes coffee and feeds the chickens out in the cool silence of the early morning.

She’s getting so good these days at going about her business just as if nothing has ever happened.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


She finds the note the next day, in the afternoon, folded neatly and trapped under a candle on top of her bedside table. Jack takes it from her when she holds it out to him and says, “This from Mrs. Adler?”

Abigail nods, short, and the corner of Jack’s mouth twitches, and she thinks, he’s too smart for his own good.

“What’s it say,” she says, twisting her fingers in the hem of her jacket.

Jack gives her a long look, and reads, “‘Should your loneliness become unbearable, you may find me at the Blackwater Hotel for dinner any day this week. Please do not wear black.’”

Abigail’s stomach drops. She reaches out and takes the note from Jack, knows that what she’s thinking is written plain on her face for him to see, and her son is so, so goddamn smart. He sees it.

Jack clears his throat and looks away, says, “I’m going to take Rufus down to the creek, go fishing.”

Abigail nods. The paper crinkles where she clutches it, involuntary, against her chest.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

Abigail had kissed Sadie for the first time at the camp on the river outside Rhodes. She’d slipped out of her tent, after Jack had fallen asleep and the men had gone back to their own beds and let the campfire burn down to embers, and found Sadie sitting on the jetty with her feet in the water, smoking her way through a packet of cigarettes in the moonlight. Abigail doesn’t remember why she did it, now. It could have been any number of things — she was young and stupid, or drunk, or starved for affection, or had finally lost her mind trying to raise a child and keep herself alive running around with a gang of wanted men — but she doesn’t remember. She just remembers kneeling down next to Sadie and pulling the cigarette out of her mouth and kissing her softly, one hand at her throat, her thumb resting in the divot of Sadie’s collarbone.

Sadie hadn’t stopped her then. She’d wrapped her hand around Abigail’s wrist and opened her mouth and neither one of them had pulled away until the cigarette burned down far enough to singe the tips of Abigail’s fingers. Abigail had yelped and thrown it into the water and then sat back on her heels and covered her mouth with both hands, and Sadie had stared at her, wide-eyed in the dark, her hand still out in the air where she had been holding Abigail by the arm a moment before.

Sadie had taken a sharp breath and before she could say anything Abigail had gathered up her skirt and shot awkwardly to her feet and gone back to her tent, without looking back at Sadie there on the pier. In the morning she’d locked eyes with Sadie over the rim of her cup of coffee and Sadie had looked away and pulled the brim of her hat down to hide her face, and Abigail had rubbed her thumb against the little pink burn on the knuckle of her index finger and, for once in her life, she hadn't said anything at all.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Abigail had let it simmer for days, distracted enough to lose count of how many times she’d stabbed her sewing needle into the tips of her fingers, snappish and cruel when anyone tried to speak to her. Then she had screwed her courage to the sticking post and snuck out of her tent again in the middle of the night and into Sadie’s. She had hesitated in the flap of Sadie’s tent, unsure of what to do with her hands, for a long moment while Sadie had stared at her and then her face had softened and she had said, in her creaky, low voice, Come here then, and Abigail had lurched forward, compelled to motion.

Sadie had kissed her first that time, her hands around the back of Abigail’s neck and Abigail working the buttons loose on Sadie's yellow blouse. Abigail had scrambled into Sadie’s lap, yanked unceremoniously at the hem of her shirt until Sadie had laughed and raised her arms, patient, for Abigail to tug it over her shoulders, and Sadie had smiled against her mouth and slipped her hands up under Abigail’s skirt and Abigail had tried her hardest — and failed — to keep quiet.

She’d slipped back into her tent before the sun came up. Jack had never even noticed she was gone, and if anyone else had heard anything, that night or any of the ones that came after, they’d been kind enough to leave it alone.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
  


 

She wears a different dress that evening — dark blue, one that she thinks brings out the color of her eyes, and she polishes her shoes, piles her hair up on the crown of her head, pinches her cheeks until they’re pink. She stares too long at herself in the mirror, her hands clenched into fists in the folds of her skirt, nerves buzzing in the pit of her stomach.

She loosens her hands, slowly, one finger at a time, smooths them down the front of her dress, and then she rides into town with the sun setting behind her and hitches her horse outside the Blackwater Hotel, and when she pushes the doors open and steps inside she tells herself she’s only imagining the hush that falls, the narrowing down of the entire crowd of rowdy drunks and working girls to Sadie Adler, smoking in a low-lit corner of the room, an empty seat across from her at the little round table, her long hair loose and her black trousers pressed impeccably neat and the collar of her blouse open at her throat.

Abigail crosses the room with her ears ringing, tucks herself into the velvet chair across from Sadie and reaches for her pack of cigarettes. She waits patiently for Sadie to strike a match for her, quick, with the edge of her thumbnail, and light her cigarette, her hand cupped around the flame. Abigail pulls smoke into her lungs and then lets it drift out slow through her nose, sits back in the chair and watches Sadie lean towards her, in perfect sync, like she’s pulled, like she doesn't even know she's done it.

“Mrs. Adler,” Abigail says, soft.

“Mrs. Marston,” Sadie echoes, and taps her cigarette in the ashtray. “Care to join me for dinner?”

Abigail looks at her through her eyelashes, bites at the inside of her cheek, and says, “No.”

**Author's Note:**

> title from [eyeoneye by andrew bird](https://youtu.be/DJkv_gCdRSw).


End file.
